This web application is the result of a combination of projects which have focused on unincorporated communities in Wisconsin. Beginning in 2010, the Wisconsin State Cartographer’s Office (SCO) had the goal of mapping the state’s unincorporated communities (unincs) to document their location and existence. Using various mapping sources and ground truthing (lots of road trips that followed the scenic route!), SCO has mapped and placed over 1000 unincs into 3 classes: Verified unincs (existing), Other unincs (requiring further investigation) and Phantoms. This project has concentrated on Phantoms because, at some point in the past, they were historical, regional, potential, or even fictional locales that, correctly or not, came to be known as communities worthy of being put on a map. And yet, they no longer actually physically exist. There are approximately 125 Phantoms that have been verified as no longer existing. There are another 625 mapped places in Wisconsin that are categorized by the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) as populated places (=unincorporated communities) but have not yet been classified by SCO as one of the above three categories. 58 of these mapped places were determined to likely be Phantoms based on the "first cut" mapping methodology developed for this project. If you are interested in an explanation of the methodology used, please check here.

Sources:
Wisconsin Statewide Parcel Map
US Census Bureau

Created by Michael Hasinoff for Geography 778: Practicum in GIS Development, UW-Madison, Fall 2022